Guild Wars 2

I’ve thought a lot about this game and read a lot of posts, experienced a lot of tournaments and have figured it’s about time I vent my frustration. If you want my credentials and a look at my point of view then allow me to inform you; at this point in time i have played 1,027 hours 700 of which on my ranger, i have 115 QP, and 1,272 tournaments won. I’ve spent more than time on this game than most people would deem “healthy”. Mostly because I find the PvP incredibly fun and engaging. *

However, as much fun as it is, it is not without faults as most of dwellers of this forum have ascertained. But I don’t find this faults to be with class balancing. I see loads of threads complaining about mesmers/guardians/thieves what have you, but from my perspective and the perspective of the people that i play with… The balance is really good in this game especially for an mmo. Of course there could be tweaks to make more variety but comparatively, this game’s balance is something that most mmos should aspire to. Everything else is much less impressive.

The faults that myself and many others are discovering or have already discovered are seemingly much larger and much more difficult to fix. Let’s talk a little about lack of features. This game was launched with free tournaments and hotjoins… and that’s it. Coming from beta weekends and expecting a lot more on release, needless to say i was disappointed but hey I figured anet doesnt owe me anything, this game is worth much more than the 60$ i payed for it so I’m going to wait and see. I mean e-sport for an mmo has never been successful and trying to break the mold and create new systems that might work cant be easy.

I sat in the mists for 2 months never once leaving aside from little escapades with friends who have since found better things to do with their spare time. To me, the release of paid tournaments on halloween was like christmas coming early and removing the svanir and block bugs brought me to tears with joy. As time passed i figured I’d step outside the little bubble of the mists and level my ranger to 80 and witness what “the other side” had to offer.

Needless to say my mind was blown. The scenery as i leveled continued to amaze me zone after zone, the way the events worked together was entertaining and i enjoyed the story mode enough to turn off my music and listen to the voice overs. I took my time leveling I completed each zone I stepped foot in and I loved it. I stopped setting up groups for free and paid tournaments and only bothered to pvp when invited by someone i know.

Then I began seeing why there are so few people in the mists. Even in anvil rock where i see tons of people everyday chilling next to the collectibles locker, there would probably be more people in WvW at any given time.

Taking a step back, i looked at the game from a distance. Heart of the mists is one zone, that literally looks like a world of warcraft private server. Vendors strewn about in order that hand out loot, NPC’s you see in FoN/LotF but not a trebuchet u can practice killing like you might on khylo. The cannons have just started working. And I have doubts that the class bots have been kept updated with the latest patches. There is also an unfinished jumping puzzle of some sort near the underwater training area. Compared to the dozen or so zones outside of the mists, HoM doesn’t look good.
Okay I’ve ventured a little off track but let’s get back to features. I don’t know what the size is of the sPvP team is. I’ve seen posts but I don’t know what to compare that to, so I have no idea at what rate I should expect things but there are some things myself and every other player does know.
Every month so far, the PvE crew cranks out a new dungeon and lots of content like it’s their job. Literally mini-expansions as developers like to call them. Most of this content is a massive PvE update, a little bit for WvW, and a large balance update for sPvP . sPvP players have received a new map and paid tournaments. And that’s great but there’s a larger issue at hand.

During Christmas I played the bell event and almost nobody had pvp gear in my zones except for myself. I expected this but then I thought to myself, why would these people ever want to play spvp? I couldn’t answer that question, hotjoins arnt fun and they are not at a high enough rank to get invited into a free tournament group. Hell if they aren’t from anvil rock they’ll probably never get a free tournament group (NA of course).

Why bother trying to get into the sPvP scene when there’s a full game to play, dungeons to run, castles to destroy and legendaries to make. Unless someone is dedicated to mmo pvp it doesn’t happen. There isn’t a ELO to be proud of, there is no dueling to be had, there arnt even fun activities to bide time with for sPvP, there arnt even people who are willing to discuss the pvp without being sore and angry after 10 minutes. I would be proud of my 115 QPs if most people didn’t treat is as jack kitten because u don’t lose any QPs if you lose…

The only drive people have to rank up is to look cool and even THAT’S not fun because the mystic forge just feels like it’s eating materials. If the price of an item was double the average amount of glory it takes to craft something in the mystic forge… it would still feel better buying it than crafting it in the forge. Playing solo queue free tournament is like jumping into a quake server without ever playing quake before (A sheer nightmare). Ranking acts as a barrier of entry and the QP ladder just makes the elite feel more elite. There are no features to draw new player to play sPvP and the systems in place appear to just kick people off the bottom rung on the ladder.

If you’ve read this far I commend you, but take note I am not a game developer I am a player and I only voice my opinion that has been influenced by the voices of others. If there was one thing I would like to see, I would like to see that Anet holds true to their promise of a matchmaking system in January. I would like to see some of those PvE developers to remodel the mists and I would like to see more activities for the sPvP community so we can have some good natured fun when we feel like taking a break from competing without having to resort to leveling or doing dungeons or some nonsense like that.

TL;DR: I’m afraid I cant help you with that one

P.S. For some reason it’s difficult for me to stay on track when I’m writing, and I’ve re-read it and it makes sense in my head but I just hope it made sense in yours.

*I’ll attach a screen shot for proof

Don’t worry. Even if you did ramble a bit it made sense to me

Basically, you really like PvP, but are disappointed with the state of things as compared to PvE. You want GW2 to go big, but can’t see it happening now due to lack of certain things (everyone knows what I’m talking about).
I am in exactly the same boat as you. I’m also seriously considering buying Forge, which for $20 looks pretty good.

Despite a long history of PVP games, I don’t stPVP in this game because I loathe downed state and all of its flow-on effects. The constant disruption of combat flow and pacing brought about by downed state and needing to stand in circles to win feels totally wrong.

Besides the downed state turnoff, i’m sure a decent chunk of potential PVP players are turned off by the numerous 1-2-button instagib skills Anet seems to be so fond of.

Kinda the opposite for me.
Why spend hours grinding PvE gear when it has no purpose in competitive (s/tPvP)?
I mean you can grind gold for gems forTourny Tickets and finishers I guess but that’s about it…

Jumper.9482:

Kinda the opposite for me.
Why spend hours grinding PvE gear when it has no purpose in competitive (s/tPvP)?
I mean you can grind gold for gems forTourny Tickets and finishers I guess but that’s about it…

imho the reward for farming pve is pown in wvwvw.

farming in pvp gives no reward

pve 1-0 pvp

Jumper.9482:

Kinda the opposite for me.
Why spend hours grinding PvE gear when it has no purpose in competitive (s/tPvP)?
I mean you can grind gold for gems forTourny Tickets and finishers I guess but that’s about it…

Jumper we’ve talked and you know im incredibly impressed by your dedicated grind to raise your rank.

But you’ve just brought a whole ‘nother point to the table. Literally nothing but gems transfer between sPvP and PvE/WvW. Spending hundreds of hours in PvE will still land you at rank 1 with everyone else who started the game. Spending hundreds of hours in PvP will land you at level 2 with everyone else who started the game. If you want to experience everything you’re encouraged to split your time to do both, but if you do that you’re not likely going to get anywhere in either.

For example, I dont see anybody rank 45+ doing fractals 20+ or with a legendary. Whenever I do PvE if feel like im falling behind in sPvP, and because I do so much sPvP i feel like i have no chance at getting a legendary.

I’ll be honest the only reason why i leveled was because i wanted to do something before paids started. Eventually i got addicted to it because it was fun, but I never do things for the grind.

Probably the best written explanation of what’s plaguing the game. Not only is it well written, it has great perspective from a quality player who understands the game as a whole. I’ve seen many quality players with tunnel vision for their top teams needs; meanwhile, many of those needs directly harm the games overall popularity.

I am astonished by the sheer basicness of SPVP. It offers nothing except the chance to competitively enjoy the games combat system, which the PVP devs didn’t develop (to my knowledge). So, to me it was like a relay race where the team that created the combat and foundation passed it to the SPVP team and either because of a major lack of support for the SPVP side or some other reason, they basically started walking with the baton. That’s what’s so bad to me. It had the chance, it had it right in it’s hands….and this is what was done with it.

I’d also like to add this: after watching youtube videos, every manifesto and reading every post from the second this game was announced, if you asked me how the PVP portion could fail, I would probably say:

Boring game mode (btw, I would have actually said a conquest type): check
lack of support: check
No tangible reason to play: check

Thanks for the compliments Felivear! And I agree with you, it feels like there is a massive gap in effort when it comes to combat development and pretty much everything else that involves sPvP.

I mean who knows, maybe if we didn’t hold it on to such high standards and build up expectations for ourselves we could have expected this.

But yeah it really feels like they’re walking with the freaking baton and it hurts as spectators to just watch em walk.

For sure. I don’t get why your character is completely separated from your Real world character. I can’t even fully get involved in my ranger since they’re such a massive difference. In most MMO’s, I want my character to live through PvP! With this system is more I made a dummy to just test out prototype armors and builds that won’t ever be useful for me.

Good read and agree. I do both PvE and tPvP and have a decent balance in both (rank 24/ level 80 100% exploration / 11 fractals). Still a long ways from a legendary though and recently been doing more tPvP for gems.

side note: The most annoying part is having my gear in my inventory for both, I have 2 sets for PvP and 2 sets for PvE along with food/tools.

The main problem is that new players have no inspiration to start playing sPvP, other then to test builds or try something ells. I feel like there needs to be made “heros” in sPvP. There needs to be elite players that new players can look up too, and use as inspiration to become better. As it is now, only people who care to know, has any idea about who’s the top players.

Imagine if every month there was a huge amount of advertising, about the upcoming monthly tournament, in all game modes. I’m talking about advertising on signs in LA and WvW, NPCs talking about the upcoming tournaments, and even a video on the website. All done to promote sPvP, and to urge people to come and watch the matches in Spectator Mode!

Imagine something like this video, with a voice-over that talks about the last match ups, upcoming matches, teams, and top players, for the next monthly tournament:
http://youtu.be/h7OvAK0wFoA?t=1m6s

Basically; give people a reason to love sPvP, even if they don’t like playing it.

Kasama.8941:

The main problem is that new players have no inspiration to start playing sPvP, other then to test builds or try something ells. I feel like there needs to be made “heros” in sPvP. There needs to be elite players that new players can look up too, and use as inspiration to become better. As it is now, only people who care to know, has any idea about who’s the top players.

Imagine if every month there was a huge amount of advertising, about the upcoming monthly tournament, in all game modes. I’m talking about advertising on signs in LA and WvW, NPCs talking about the upcoming tournaments, and even a video on the website. All done to promote sPvP, and to urge people to come and watch the matches in Spectator Mode!

Imagine something like this video, with a voice-over that talks about the last match ups, upcoming matches, teams, and top players, for the next monthly tournament:
http://youtu.be/h7OvAK0wFoA?t=1m6s

Basically; give people a reason to love sPvP, even if they don’t like playing it.

Speaking of monthly tournaments, I was talking with a friend of mine and we were discussing most of which that has already been discussed. But then he brought up monthly and yearly tournaments which I have since completely forgotten about.

Paid tournaments were released almost 2 months ago and we have no signs of monthly tournaments. Which would act as an incentive, I mean i get that things take time to develop things but I just wish they were timed more appropriately.

I mean how much sense would it make if they had a solo/premade queue ladder system that were single matches like league of legends.

Then months later they introduced the free tourny> paid tourny > monthly tourn > yearly tourny system… when it was actually finished.

But i guess its no use pandering in the past, I just hope when all anets plans come together it pans out for us and for them.

I agree with your assessment on the PvE vs. PvP argument. The amount of features PvP has received has been lackluster overall. The lack of continuance between both respective realms is rather off-putting to the progression based(carrot on a stick or whatever you wanna call it) motivated players who he see the mode putting them behind their friends/guildies.

The other side of the game is pretty insane in comparison. On the flipside, the lack of “grind” for sPvP makes the switch to PvE rather annoying. I’ve recently hit 80, and looking at the gold bill to get my character just “up to par” is rather….uh crazy? Farming nodes in Orr is already getting on my nerves. At least with PvP I get to have fun right off the bat just by playing the game.

Long but good read, and I agree with you.

I hope the anet staff sees this and starts acting..

The read gave me this calm Christmas feeling.
I think it is good.

Basically what I believe is happening is PvE devs are 90% of the studio, then there is some 7% WvW group and a tiny group of few guys trying to prove their PvP is good and push it forward at the same time having the head of the studio crying for gem revenue.
Whatever’s going on, we sure were false advertised regarding the PvP.

@ features discussion: I woudn’t expect the matchmaking before February. The argument that major e-sports never became what they are today before well into a year after release comes to my mind.
I’m thnking Anet realises their PvP is kitten and unfinshed and they know it needs changes, but firstly they have this illusionary comfort of having 1 year to develop basic features, so why bother?
Even with these features in place there is still a problem of Conquest and map design being created in the development Foundry of Failed Creations (after Kormir took over). The rationale behind their position in this matter is most probably that they don’t, as a PvP team, have the resources to come up with something good and new, so they’ll just focus on adding basic features and hope PvP becomes popular when they’re in place.

What’s going to happen? Time will tell, but I wouldn’t be too optimistic.

Merry Christmas fellow bunch of PvPers.

A very good read!

As someone who was really excited about the pvp pre-launch and now only do WvW once or twice per week I agree with the OP. I have the naïve hope that the reason there have been so few pvp updates are because Anet has realized it was a flop and are working on a completely new system. Likely? No, but when is a better time to hope than christmas

I agree with all that the OP said. I am not very much into talking and writing on forums, but I thought alot about this game, too. I really hope this is one of the posts Mr. Sharp prints out and brings to the team meetings. If the attention and care that is given to PvE content is given to PvP just for a while, alot will change, more people will embrace PvP for sure.

Im in a casual guild that does all types of game modes, but I mostly prefer PvP, but I know my guildies, if the game changes in the ways the OP discribed alot of them will go into PvP.

You think this game is balanced? Duel a full glass cannon ranger against full glass cannon thief or mesmer and let us see how well you do.

Khyras.8021:

You think this game is balanced? Duel a full glass cannon ranger against full glass cannon thief or mesmer and let us see how well you do.

I dont want to have a full fledged discussion about class balance but i feel like i should explain myself so people dont get confused.

By good balance I mean that I see every profession running a variety builds in free tournaments every day. In paid tournaments that variety slims, and there are favorites, but with nearly every profession being viable and having more than one build to play I’d say that’s good balance.

When i was watching the WoW finals I wasnt surprised watching the two best teams compete with the exact same classes and the exact same builds (Resto shaman, Frost mage, and destro lock [I think]). Compared to that GW2 has amazing balance, and it might be why I like to play it so much and would love to see it succeed.

Narcarsis.5739:

To be honest the game is extremely balanced for being out for only 3 months. Finer issues take time to work out and well it may seem frustrating as a player the Devs don’t get as much credit as should be given. People expect things to be perfect upon release but games like this take time to tweak. While I agree that the game mode seems stale and I like your suggestions I also believe that people are still learning the game and what can be done.

The meta changes every 2 weeks or so as teams come up with counters for others. While a few classes tend to dominate the general meta they are all balanced fairly well (Ele, Mesmer on the stronger side/Warrior, Engi on the weaker). Most of the complaints we hear about are from a more casual players who are getting killed by classes that punish poor positioning and timing (ie thieves/mesmers). While it’s good to listen to the general population it’s not healthy for them to balance the game around it.

Let the game take its course for a little longer, things take time and 3 months means the game is still in infancy. People expect too much far too quickly – Be patient.

How is the end game? That’s what matters, not what the crybabies are saying.

I remember the reason I gave up on WoW’s balance wasn’t because of the crybabies, there were ALWAYS crybabies. I gave up in season 4 when 48 out of the top 50 2v2 teams, had a resto druid on them. It was obviously imbalanced for the players that actually knew how the game worked, and how to play their classes and work together. Is the end game like that? All the same combos? If so, the balance is broken.

I would say that this “Balance is fine and all of the top players I speak to agree” meme is growing tiresome.

Yes, balance is fine (roughly) if the current meta and game type remain constant. That said, I would argue that the bunker build meta is ultimately poison to an eSport scene as it is kitten boring to watch.

Moreover, god help them if they add different game types. In this case, classes who are viable due to a strong bunker will ultimately dry up (assuming the new game type does not require a bunker) exposing inherent class imbalances (like burst vs sustain).

Finally, the current meta is hugely limited. Average sPvP groups (to my knowledge) are made up of largely the same classes with very, very minor variations. A good and well-balanced game would allow for variation in both class and strategy (I think Dota is the one to look at here with solo mid/duo mid, tri lane, carry/support, heavy ganker, jungler, etc.).

Currently that variety just isn’t there.

Do you know why I don’t sPvP? Because no matter how engaging the combat is, ultimately each match feels identical to the match before it and so on.

i replied to this earlier bro guess my post was infracted all i said was this is really long and i agree with everything u said. great read bro i guess i wont reply to posts at 4 am to make sure i dont get infractions.

PS. can you try and make it longer next time you forgot to add mesmers need a nerf.

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

i replied to this earlier bro guess my post was infracted all i said was this is really long and i agree with everything u said. great read bro i guess i wont reply to posts at 4 am to make sure i dont get infractions.

PS. can you try and make it longer next time you forgot to add mesmers need a nerf.

haha sataar I’m gonna guess you’re referring to that earlier post I made about the mesmer portal. Everyone’s got their opinions

But speaking of infractions, this forum board does seem a little too regulated for my tastes. I mean I get that trolls/spammers and all that stuff is bad, but a lot of just for fun posts are getting removed because they’re not promoting discussion.

I guess what im trying to say about the regulation is that there it’s a double edged sword. It stops the trolls/spammers pretty handidly, but it also sucks the soul out of the forums. You have to be either super serious and on topic or risk getting infracted.

Anyway im sorry that happened to your post and im glad you agree with most of my point of view xD